Poems & Essays

Nesting Dolls

my children once fit inside me
like Russian nesting dolls
their dreams curled up within their skulls
encased in my steeled bunker

even cicadas shed their shells
scaffolding is dismantled
upon completion of a building

now I am their tiny doll
shelved between folds of grey memory
even their thoughts
are too big
for me to contain

Amy Baskin writes poetry, stories and nonfiction. She received the Pacific Northwest Plein Air Writers People’s Choice Award for her poem “Snowbound: Day 6, Imagined.” She has had the good fortune of studying the poetry revision process at The Attic Institute with Oregon’s two-time poet laureate, Paulann Petersen. Her poem “Runoff” was featured in the August 2015 edition of the Gorge Literary Journal.